


the space between the stars

by Laylah



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Body Horror, Casual Murder, Community: bloodyvalentine, F/M, Necrophilia, Not Okay At All, Terrible Puppetry, Xeno
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-17
Updated: 2012-02-17
Packaged: 2017-10-31 07:45:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/341671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laylah/pseuds/Laylah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"My love," she says, smiling so you can see every one of her lamprey fangs, "my love and my delight." She calls you words borrowed from conquered civilizations. "One of my admirals has asked to come tonight to court me."</p>
            </blockquote>





	the space between the stars

You are what she has made you.

Your consciousness drifts through the network of her flagship, its sensors your nerves, its systems your limbs. You come back to what remains of your body only seldom, only when she calls you back. You're...hiding from it; you can admit that. If you confine your mind to your old body when it has been treated like this, you'll break.

Are you broken? You might be broken. She might have broken you. You have been with her for so long.

The sweeps before she took you are...not blurred, in your memory. They're locked away. You put them out of reach, so they wouldn't be contaminated with the life she has bound you to. You think you did it on purpose. You know the memories must have been important. You wouldn't have wanted them mingled with what you've become. _That was in another era, and besides, the boy is dead._ She reads you poems sometimes, when you are alone with her on the bridge. Occasionally a line will stick with you, for reasons you can't reach.

She is calling you back to your flesh now, her cool fingers and pristine claws on your face. She pities the wreck that she and her physicarvers made of your body to harness your mind. You let your self settle into that damaged prison again, working sluggish muscles, moving neglected lips and tongue.

"Empress," you say; slurred, lisping. _Empreth_.

"My love," she says, smiling so you can see every one of her lamprey fangs, "my love and my delight." She calls you words borrowed from conquered civilizations. "One of my admirals has asked to come tonight to court me."

Your lip curls in disgust. None of these idiots can hold her attention, but still they keep trying. "Did you agree?"

"I want a diversion," she says. "And perhaps you'll tell me what you think of him."

"Maybe," you agree. "Maybe I'll show you," careful attention to the shapes of your mouth so the words come clear.

Her eyes sparkle, fuschia with power and madness and excitement. "Do that," she says.

You are what she has made you.

Her admiral is a blueblood and a useless idiot, like so many of them are. He's alternately pompous and pleading, craven and outrageously audacious—it takes a lot of arrogance to pity Her Imperial Condescension, the more so when the party advancing suit only knows her from a distance. He's also stupid enough to ignore you utterly, to treat you like you're no more sentient than the furniture. He presses his suit with her as if they're alone, making extravagant claims and perverse offers while she encourages his pathetic display. She's goading you. You're sure of it.

When he gets as far as mentioning that he has, in his possession, a never-used sterling bucket, your patience runs out. You divert the the smallest fraction of your power from the ship's systems and snap his worthless neck.

She hisses at you like an angry purrbeast, her fins flaring with displeasure. "Too soon," she tells you.

"Not thoon enough," you answer. She won't remain angry. He was a morning's entertainment, but you are the soul of her ship.

"I wanted a diversion," she says, kicking her suitor delicately onto his back with one bare webbed foot. His eyes are wide with shock, his head lolling at a graceless angle.

"You wanted to pail," you say, because you have little left to lose and you think she enjoys your lowblooded crassness. "Let'th not pretend you wanted him for hith mind."

Her laughter breaks in shards across your aurals, bright and fractured as starlight. "Maybe you're right," she says. "But you still ruined my chance."

You can tilt your head a little; you would have shrugged before you became what you are now. "Maybe. Maybe not," you say. You're in deep space, on a cruising course, not using a lot of your talents to move the ship right now. You stretch out an arc of twining red-blue power, pick up the body off the floor, and haul it upright. "Got a while before rigor thetth in."

For a second it looks like you've actually shocked her. Her eyes go wide, her mouth a perfect O. Then she throws back her head and laughs, brilliant bubbling giggles. "Dance with me, my angel, my love," she says.

You take better control of the body and extend its hand to her. She takes the offered hand, and you bring the other to rest against her waist. The dead troll's head flops forward. You don't care.

She and your puppet corpse waltz around the room, clumsily at first, but with more grace as you fine-tune your control. You work your power into the limbs so you can make each step certain and confident, so you can spin her and twist with her, spines bending in tandem. Your own spine meets the ship's wetware about halfway through the thoracic vertebrae. Your empress tilts the corpse's chin up and kisses the slack, shapely mouth. You don't assist the body in kissing back. It doesn't impair her enthusiasm.

You bring the hands up to the straps of her dress, sliding them down off her shoulders. She looks from the body over to you, and her smile is brilliant, blue-smeared. "You take such liberties, my love."

"I give you what you athk for," you say.

She smiles at you as you use borrowed hands to pull her out of her dress. It would be easier to do this with your power alone, without using a flesh proxy, but she doesn't seem to mind when the dead troll's claws score her skin as you undress her. "Let me see," she says instead, pulling sharply, so a few buttons go flying from the admiral's dress coat.

You give her what she asks for, seams ripping as her guest's clothes succumb to your psionics. The body beneath the uniform is solid, muscular, attractively scarred. She strokes those lines appreciatively with her perfect claws. You wonder how much of this she's doing for your benefit. You wonder if it matters.

She pulls her suitor down with her. You cooperate, moving your puppet's limbs to balance hers, so the two of them come together in a lotus. Her bulge is awake and seeking, flushed brilliant and wet; at this angle you can just see it writhe between her thighs. You coax the dead troll's into a semblance of life—the flesh is limp and soft with no blood to stiffen it, with no nervous impulses to make relevant muscles taut. You have to curl your power tightly around each length to make them move, to make them twine with hers.

You watch her as she rides the body, as she tosses her head, her hair cascading in ripples down her back, black as the space between the stars. You hate what's left of her blueblooded admiral. You increase the concentration of your power, manipulating the dead troll's bulge, until it reaches the point of crackling intensity that she can feel _your_ touch, the hissing, sparking energy of it.

She snarls in furious, beautiful pleasure, her thighs tightening, molding flesh with no living tension to it. You cannot feel anything of your own body to compare to what she does now; the nerves have been rerouted, the organs...you don't look too closely into your medical records. You can only watch her, and listen, and coax her onward.

Her body rocks with climax, fluid pouring from her seedflap to pool tyrian and shimmering beneath their joined bodies. If you tried, perhaps you could coax a last reserve of genetic material from your puppet to mingle, completing the charade. You choose not to try. No sense in making yourself jealous of a corpse.

When she rises to her feet, vivid fluids streaking the satin gray of her thighs, her fins and her cheeks still flushed, you let the body fall. The game has run its course. "My love," she says, and the sway of her hips as she comes closer is the rolling of the sea you'll never see again. "My sweetness, my beloved." She cups your face in her hands and leans in to kiss you. You taste her admiral's blood. With your power you trace the bone arch of her brow and the sharp tines of her fins. She licks her way into your mouth and spares you her fangs entirely.

She's smiling at you when she pulls back. "You always know just how to please me, my love," she says. "You always know just what I need."

In the back of your head there is a tiny nagging voice telling you that you have become a monster. You used to hear so many voices, but now almost all of them are locked away. "Of courthe I do," you tell her, and you return her smile.

You are what she has made you.


End file.
